DAKAR, Senegal — Since it was reported that hundreds of mercenaries from South Africa and other African countries were playing a decisive role in Nigeria’s military campaign against Boko Haram – operating attack helicopters and armored personnel carriers and fighting to retake towns and villages captured by the Islamist terrorist group, which has now pledged allegiance to ISIS – many western nations including the USA have launched a political assassination of the military efforts in Nigeria.
Why are they using mercenaries to fight Boko Haram? Is this the question for which the West wants immediate answers?
If you thought everyone in the world wanted to see Boko Haram defeated and wiped off the maps of Africa, this twist of worry by western nations about the use of African mercenaries in a fight against Boko Haram, should at all costs begin to puzzle you!
One notorious paper in the US, The New York Times, or so it is called, leads the pack in a series of allegations about the use of mercenaries in Nigeria to defeat Boko Haram. The US newspaper, disreputable for its hypocrisy and alarming lack of integrity in racist reporting, suggested that a Nigerian government official had acknowledged the presence of mercenaries in the northeast.
They claim that this senior government official in northern Nigeria said South Africans — camped out in a remote portion of an airport in Maiduguri, the city at the heart of Boko Haram’s uprising — conducted most of their operations at night because “they really don’t want to let people know what is going on.”
We have to ask, what fighting coalition broadcasts its intentions during the day?
The US reports smack of an unofficial, un-African foreign investigation into the use of mercenaries in Nigeria.
They claim that South Africa had issued strong warnings against any mercenary activities in Nigeria, saying that any of its citizens fighting there would be prosecuted upon returning to South Africa.
South Africa?
Alas, mercenaries to defeat Boko Haram?
The US is allowed to deploy more than 3000 troops in Liberia in the name of fighting Ebola, but Nigeria cannot call on the expertise of mercenaries in Africa to save African lives?
Should African mercenaries not be used to defeat this Boko Haram?
Let’s remember that for months, parts of Nigeria have been lost to Boko Haram, an Islamist terrorist group that has stormed into villages, killing civilians at random, abducting women and girls at will, and forcing tens of thousands of residents to flee across the northeast into neighboring Cameroon and beyond.
Last Thursday, a spokesman for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, said that his group had accepted Boko Haram’s pledge of allegiance, making it an official branch of the Syria-based terrorist group.
And so to any African, Boko Haram must be defeated, at all costs! And if African mercenaries are in the vanguard in the liberation of some of our African communities, then so shall it be!
But, the when, the how, and with what Boko Haram is defeated, seems to matter more to the West than the innocent lives that are being torn apart by a Boko Haram, a terrorist group that only appeared coincidentally at a time when Nigeria catapulted herself into the biggest economy in Africa?
It might seem pragmatic, even comforting, that the scandalous US newspaper comprehends that the so-called informer in the Nigerian government admits that mercenaries might play a crucial role in a new offensive against Boko Haram after nearly a six-year insurrection that has left African lives devastated.
Who wouldn’t want African mercenaries to save African lives in the northeast of Nigeria and finally beat Boko Haram back to its source? The West?
Most of the mercenary reports about the war on Boko Haram seem to focus on the Nigerian government rather than the menace that is Boko Haram itself, signifying that the West may be more interested in the upcoming elections in Nigeria than it is interested in seeing Africa’s biggest economy wipe out a terrorist organization that is now a global one.
At what point does the American claim that the Nigerian military is under pressure because of a presidential election to be held this month, while at the same time proclaiming that the recent string of successes against Boko Haram, by the Nigerian government, boasting about the recapture of a number of towns, slap us in the face with their unnecessary reports about who is doing the winning – perhaps the work of African mercenaries – in a fight that we, not Boko Haram, must win?
Who is doing the fighting against Boko Haram matters now?
We need no reminding that the war against Boko Haram is an African one, with Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Benin contributing troops, about 8,700-strong force, to fight the terrorists. Chad’s army has played a significant role against Boko Haram, having recaptured a number of towns from the terrorists.
It is also fascinating, due perhaps to a change of heart, that the New York Times and the US now refer to Boko Haram as simply militants, not terrorists!
ISIS is a terrorist organization that must be defeated at all costs, but no Boko Haram? We are confused.
It seems hopeful that these alleged African mercenaries in Nigeria fighting this international terrorist organization have changed the momentum in the military effort in favor of the African coalition, not Boko Haram.
How this victory elicits the uproar of our American friends beats us? Does America feel left out in a victory against a bad group? Is it not destitution to want to appear on any map of good or even worse criticize Nigeria for taking pragmatic steps against terrorism?
Exactly what is America’s posture in the world against terrorism? Are they for it, or against it?
Using mercenaries, they say, is not the best of options for a nation to compromise her sovereignty, but allowing Boko Haram to roam Nigerian lands, leaving in its wake only devastation and corpses, is not the worst option?
Others like Paul Lubeck, of a tiny US university, say that the alleged use of mercenaries by Nigeria raises questions about the weakness of the country’s major institutions, especially the army, hollowed out by years of top-level corruption and that Nigeria is subcontracting the national polity. He claims, “it’s the destitution of Nigerian nationalism.”
Corruption in Nigeria is a diet in the West we are already familiar with. What’s new?
But it is not American destitution when the US offers to put American troops in Nigeria and are refused? It is not destitution had the Nigerian government allowed the US to build a military base in Nigeria?
Even further, it is not British destitution when mercenaries in Africa stop a British led terrorist group that included Sir Mark Thatcher, the son of a former Prime Minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher, from overthrowing the government of our oil-rich Equatorial Guinea in 2004?
In Washington, the US capital, Nigeria’s chief of defense intelligence, Rear Adm. Gabriel E. Okoi, said in an interview last Wednesday that South African contractors had been hired in recent months to help train Nigerian troops. But, like any intelligent Nigerian, he said he was unaware of any current or former members of South Africa’s military or security services hired to engage in active fighting against Boko Haram.
What is the African stance?
If the Nigerian government is using mercenaries to restore peace in Nigeria, what business has the US or the New York Times in that matter?
The most pressing issue on the minds of most Africans is rather simpler – where does Boko Haram obtain its constant supply of equipment, ammunition and fuel? Are there any western nations involved? These are the questions we want immediate answers to, because we know and we are certain that Boko Haram is not getting these materials from Africa!
So, some western nations are irate about Nigeria’s alleged use of mercenaries to fight Boko Haram?
Is this the same US government that sits idly by while young African American men are shot and killed like animals by white American cops on the streets of Ferguson, Staten Island, Florida etc.? Or is this the same New York Times that refuses to call out the blatant show of racial terrorism against African Americans in the US for the past several decades even after a brutal history of slavery and Jim Crow?
The US and the New York Times are interested in who is defeating Boko Haram? Them?
